If you have someone on your Christmas list who seems too hopeful — who still uses a paper calendar — you might consider a demotivational calendar.
On one such 2026 calendar — and you can Google a disappointing number of depressing options — January pictures a penguin with the caption, “Limitations: Until you spread your wings, you’ll have no idea how far you can walk.” February’s demotivational quote is: “Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.”
Brett Younger
Each month’s inspirational thought promises to lead you through a dismal 2026:
- “Meetings: None of us is as dumb as all of us.”
- “Tradition: Just because you’ve always done it that way doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly stupid.”
- “Multi-tasking: The art of doing twice as much as you should half as well as you could.”
- “Destiny: Born too late to explore the world, born too early to explore the stars, born right on time to explore unemployment thanks to AI.”
- “Motivation: If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job.”
Most of us do not need reminders to feel sad. So many sad things are happening. Health care costs are skyrocketing. Medicare is showing its age. The people who can least afford rising health costs are the ones paying the price. The vaccines that save children’s lives are becoming less accessible.
The peace process in Ukraine has been two steps forward, three steps back for a while. The latest peace proposal came with another round of bombing. Political pundits are trying to figure out why so many members of Congress are deciding not to run for re-election, but it is obvious the job is not fun anymore.
Many jobs are not as much fun as they used to be. While unemployment is around 4%, which sounds good, if you are in the 4%, despair seems like a reasonable choice.
We have moments when the light goes out. We have problems we cannot solve. Although the world is changing fast, the things we wish would change seem to stay the same. When we look honestly at the brokenness we cannot fix, despair seems like a reasonable choice.
Hope is buried so deep in our hearts that we may not recognize it, but we still have a longing for a life beyond despair. In fact, the sadness we feel creates space for hope.
The 13th century Sufi mystic Rumi writes:
(Despair) violently sweeps everything
out of your house,
so that new joy can find space to enter.
It shakes the yellow leaves
from the bough of your heart,
so that fresh, green leaves can grow
in their place.
It pulls up the rotten roots,
so that new roots hidden beneath
have room to grow.
Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart,
far better things will take their place.
Rumi may sound like a cockeyed optimist, but he is right that despair is an opportunity for hope.
Corrine Savage is a queer musician who was getting beat up in the comments sections on social media. Lots of mean-spirited, unthinking remarks about her looks, her talents, her intelligence left her and her writing partner feeling sad and rejected. On a particularly heavy day of feeling discouraged and out of place, they decided to write a song about hope.
“That’s my song, too. I feel sad and want to feel better.”
If I were a fish and you caught me
you’d say “Look at that fish”
shimmering in the sun
such a rare one.
If I were a rock, you would pick me up
and say, “That’s a nice rock …”
And if I were a sock, you would put me on
and say, “That’s a nice sock …”
Why’s everybody on the internet so mean?
Why’s everybody so afraid
of what they’ve never seen?
How lucky are we?
Of all the fish in the sea?
You get to be you
and I get to be me.
Just let ’em be mean
We’re as free as can be
to be the you-est of you
and the me-ist of me.
They knew it is a silly song, but they post it anyway, because they feel bad and want to do something to feel better. They do not think anyone will notice. The song now has 15 million views on TikTok, 2.5 million likes and 10 million streams on Spotify.
Two people turned the despair they felt into hope and millions say: “That’s my song, too. I feel sad and want to feel better.”
We spend our lives moving between feeling rejected and loved, between the despair that tempts us and the hope that holds us. Our days are not as loving, not as kind, not as whole as they could be. Open the doors of faith. Soften our hard hearts. Accept the hope that is deeper than disappointment, the light that shines in the darkness, the love that overcomes complacency.
Some doctors and nurses stay true to their calling. They continue to work for healing in a system that makes caring for others hard. Peacemakers do not often get statues in the park, but they keep working for peace, doing what is right, working in ways that do not receive applause. When we as a country get tired of cynical politicians, we will notice there are still idealistic public servants who believe we can do better.
This season is an opportunity to decide not to choose despair quite so often, because hope is a reasonable choice.
Brett Younger serves as senior minister at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, N.Y.